There is no standardized technique to measure creativity. No scientific or psychological way to tell if you are any more or less creative than the person standing next to you. Creativity has been associated with right-brain thinking, which makes it popular with art, but it is also considered an essential part in innovation and invention, making it popular with industrialists, mathematicians, and engineers.
It is a trait that is just as easily associated with genius as it is with insanity. Which could be the reason we ask our readers to submit works of creativity every month for our Creative Brew page, but dedicate an entire issue to being creative once a year. We yearn to showcase how brilliance can blur the line. The submissions come rolling in and we ask ourselves ‘Do I like this?’ and ‘What about this piece speaks to me?’ One set of eyes finds beauty in things another finds a mess; a poem speaks to one while boring another. This is the beauty of creativity.
Because we live in such a creative community, we have decided to alter our publication schedule. Instead of asking for submissions for winter and summer photo annuals on top of a Creative Brew edition, we have decided to instead two publish creative annuals. Tentatively scheduled for March and August, these issues will touch on creativity from every aspect — visual and written submissions encouraged. We still will run the Creative Brew page monthly on the inside back page cover.
Please enjoy this final Creative Brew edition. Let us know what you loved, and what you could’ve done without. Feel as if something was missing? Keep it in mind for submission in our Summer Annual. Enjoy, and submit at creativebrew@moonshineink.com.
Freaks Like Me
By Michelle Filippini
Has anyone else noticed that A&E, the Learning Channel, National Geographic, and other so-called educational channels have become the go-to places for shows on freaks? Screw ‘The Bachelor.’ I wanna see the ‘Man Who Looks Like a Tree’ or the ‘Girl Who Cries Blood,’ or the woman on ‘Hoarders’ who has her own system of determining when food has expired, because it’s likely I will learn something I wouldn’t from ‘The Real World.’ And they all seem to have their niches — A&E, grandaddy of them all, has the lock on people with really bad habits (‘Intervention,’ Obsessed,’ ‘Hoarders’), while TLC likes ’em big or small (‘Half Ton Man/Woman/Teen,’ ‘World’s Smallest People,’ ‘Little People, Big World’) and stupid and knocked up (‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,’ which makes MTV’s ’16 and Pregnant’ look like PBS’s ‘American Experience;’ and ’18 Kids and Counting;’ and ‘Jon and Kate Plus 8’ — oh wait …). I mean, I didn’t know you could deliver a baby in the Taco Bell restroom toilet and not realize it wasn’t a Chalupa you had just passed, and it never occurred to me that Siamese twins other than Chang and Eng could live well into middle age. (Well, I wouldn’t say the conjoined brothers profiled on TLC are living well, exactly, but they sure scamper and hop about impressively).
These shows are also educational because, just like in real life, the excessively drunk or fat people profiled die sometimes! When does that happen on the ‘Amazing Race?’ Children need to know that if they let their weight balloon to where a hydraulic lift is required to haul their fat asses out of the house for school, they might not make it to ‘My Super Sweet 16.’ And if they have to be fed through a tube in their stomach because they were forced to orally copulate their old-man babysitter when they were a kid and can no longer put anything in their mouth that requires swallowing, they’re never going to grow up to become ‘Iron Chef.’
Sometimes I get a hankering to see real-life freaks in person, but those are in short supply nowadays on account of being discovered by the educational folks on TV. I mean, what’s a regular person to do when in the mood to see a malformed individual plying his or her trade live and up-close, unfettered by the impersonal glass screen separating the poor unfortunates from their appreciative audience? Viva Las Vegas, baby. Specifically, O’Shea’s, just north of the Bellagio and Caesar’s, right on the cusp where the Strip goes south and turns into Shitsville. If the billboards aren’t subliminal enough (look, it’s an aging dwarf dressed like a leprechaun!), then the chanting ‘Girls Gone Wild’–like crowds spilling out onto the street from the casino’s open doors should be your signal that freakish goings-on await you inside. Sure enough, on the hour (but only during regular workday hours, since it’s a union shop), the surly small fellow in green velvet and matching top hat clambers up onto the bar via his special tiny ladder and works the crowd at the bar, giving the ladies (and men, too) upside-down shots of his midget juice while pretending to hump them. Several of my drinking companions chose to be serviced by Sir Lucky Charms (and confirmed that indeed he was magically delicious), and I was able to get an up-close look. It wasn’t pretty. That was one pissed little guy. Upstairs, you could pay to see a real Las Vegas Freaks show, but I must confess to some disappointment. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only freaks onstage these days are made, not born. This one swallows glass … that one’s hung by meat hooks. ‘Is the blood real?’ we demand. We’re not paying to watch crooks! I think of the abbreviated man downstairs and how we worship at his altar not made by any power tools and wonder what must his forebears — who came by their achievements in the time-honored tradition, i.e., mom and dad worked hard for those birth defects! — make of these posers? Freaks in name only, is my learned conclusion.
But not everyone can afford a trip to Vegas, and so television is doing us a great service by bringing into our living rooms the trials and tribulations of Mermaid Girl and Crack Whore Karen, as their stories are our stories. In a very real sense, we all are Mermaid Girl. Their inspiring tales of the human condition offer hope to those of us who can only dream of reaching such heights of televised despair, and must instead content ourselves with being the ‘Biggest Loser.’
~ Michelle Filippi is currently the senior development writer at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. Previously she was a project editor at the University of Nevada Press. Since graduating from California State University, Chico, with a B.A. in English (focus on creative writing), she has worked in scholarly and textbook publishing as a production editor, freelance project manager, and copy editor.
A Homecoming
To my brother Ryan in California
I drive
Mountains on one side
And ocean on the other.
Brothers and friends embrace at the onset.
Banks of fog may mist and cloud
As mountains and seas arise,
But celebrating roots
And connections and memories
Enliven the crisp evening.
This is not just a visit;
This is a homecoming
What wars have we seen
Enraged over what purpose?
What spiritual ruins
Have we cracked and forgotten
As dawn pokes
Through the majestic
Wooden cathedrals?
It matters not
But that we stand
Together.
This is not just a visit;
This is a homecoming
Men idle by and look busy
As engines whine and steam rises
Time passes and we go on
And on. Go on.
Red and white flags in hand
The earth breathes through
Our tinkerin and politicin.
This is not just a visit;
This is a homecoming
Weakly
do we understand
what we are doing
as mountains and seas arise.
If we do not visit
and stand idly by
as engines whine
and steam rises,
what will home be?
This is not just a visit;
This is a homecoming.
And so we venture
Down the rivers fall
To the peaks vista
And seek love in the woods
As fish jump
As hawks watch
With attention and notice
This is not a visit;
This is a homecoming.
~ John Arsenault
In memory of Al Odt, and all the beautiful souls our community lost in the last year.
Spirits Shine On
Clouds fill the sky, clouds blow away
Sorrow fills my day, sorrow drifts away
Words never say what I mean them to
Friends come into your life, friends go
What the spirit needs, it takes with it
What the spirit needed here, it leaves for us
Winds blow high, wind blows low
Ashes blown in the wind, etched in my mind forever
A stone born of melting molten mineral and fire
From no form, molded into a life
The life of a stone, so solid , true to itself
A crack, exposes only inner beauty
It rolls and tumbles, washed by time and water
The spirit of a stone, ever changing and free
Broken and crumbled, it’s shell diminished to sand
A never ending journey, dust we shall all be
A life so short, a life so sweet
Take the time to know every spirit you meet
Blink your eye, and we will all be gone
Awoken by winds in the early dawn
Feeling alone, feeling a loss
It is the love we feel that keeps us strong
The solitude of a stone, its spirit in the sand
The celebration of a life, its spirit shines on
~ Jim Griffin
Facebook Haiku
Poems rely on density of meaning, imagery, and rhythm to create a work larger than the sum of its parts. The new social media rely on brevity — the faster you get to the point, the better. So, if you want to say as much as possible, quickly, on Facebook and Twitter, why not use poetry? Haiku would seem a perfect format, constrained to three lines consisting of five syllables, then seven, then five. Here are three haikus I posted to friends on Facebook that communicate, in their small way, life in Truckee. ~ Richard Anderson
Autumn Haiku
Recipe for stew:
Beef, onions, carrots, wine, stock,
cold wind spitting rain.
December Haiku
Snow whipping sideways.
Furnace cranked, draws napping cat.
Split pea soup tonight!
Oscar Haiku
Best movie? My vote
goes to the pot roast. Four hours,
fork tender, four stars.
